Thor’s Day, March 21: “Man’s first disobedience”
EQ: How does Paradise Lost further Milton’s idea of Reason as “God’s Image”?
· Welcome! Gather pen/pencil, paper, yesterday’s work, today’s packet, wits!
· Opening Freewrite: Bad Guy, Bad Place
· Group Reading: Paradise Lost, Book I
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
ELACC12RL-RI1: Cite strong thorough textual evidence to support analysis
ELACC12RL-RI2: Analyze two or more themes or central ideas of text
ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, events interact, develop
ELACC12RL4-RI4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text
ELACC12RL5: Analyze an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text
ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant
ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text
ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal British texts
ELACC12RL-RI9: Analyze for theme, purpose rhetoric, and how texts treat similar themes or topics
ELACC12RL10: Read and comprehend complex literature independently and proficiently.
ELACC12W1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts
ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas
ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience
ELACC12W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis
ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames
ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions
ELACC12SL3: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, evidence and rhetoric
ELACC12SL6: Adapt speech to a variety of tasks, demonstrating a command of formal English
ELACC12L3: Demonstrate understanding of how language functions in different contexts
ELACC12L4: Determine/clarify meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases
ELACC12L5: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, nuances
ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases
Opening Freewrite: Bad Guy, Bad Place
Write 100 words on one of these, or 50 words on each, or some combination something like that:
· What do you think when somebody says the word “Satan”? What, to your mind, does that entity look like, sound like, act like? Be specific.
· What do you think when somebody says the word “Hell”? What, to your mind, does that place look like, sound like, act like? Be specific.
CLOZE: The Lady of Cambridge
1. John Milton was born in the year ______and died in ______.
2. In his youth Milton memorized ______and read almost ______.
3. He got what nickname at University?
4. Perhaps for this reason, he did what that got him temporarily expelled?
5. He traveled widely, and in ______he met ______, a famous ______.
6. His most important pamphlets were about ______, ______and ______.
7. From what physical disability did Milton suffer?
8. In 1660, Milton was put into ______by ______because ______.
9. Poor, disgraced, and dying, Milton composed the ______lines of Paradise Lost not by writing them down but by composing them in his ______and doing what?
10. Milton believed that ______– the ability to discover God’s will – is not “natural,” but must be developed by ______.
11. Unlike many Puritans, Milton believed in ______, and that we can experience righteousness only if we ______good over evil – and therefore, ______must be available (and rejected) as a ______if virtue is to be meaningful.
John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
· Like other Puritans, Milton believed that Christians are responsible for individual relationship with God – cannot rely on priest, etc.
· Believed that the mind – “Right Reason” – is the gift God gives us to find His Will in scripture, nature, and ourselves.
· Right Reason isn’t “natural” like conscience, etc.; must be developed by hard mental work.
· Unlike many Puritans, Milton believed in Free Will: we know God’s Truth only if we seek it freely and choose it openly.
SO: Righteousness, virtue, wisdom and salvation come only if we choose “good” over “evil” – sin must available as a choice, and rejected freely, if virtue is to be meaningful.
Brave words! Let’s see how that worked out.
John Milton: After Areopagitica
· 1650: Blindness. He had been losing his sight for years; by now, becomes total
· 1660: Restoration. Sick of Puritans, Parliament invites Charles II to return. Charles orders Milton imprisoned (remember Tenure of Kings?). He is soon released, but denied employment, his works burned in public (Areopagitica?).
· 1660-1666: Blind, disgraced, impoverished, bedridden, Milton composes, revises, edits 12,000 lines of Paradise Lost ALL IN HIS HEAD, and dictates in its entirety to his daughters, who write it all down according to his (memorized!) instructions.
· 1667: Paradise Lost published to instant, universal praise. Even “haters” acknowledge its greatness – have continued to do so at the highest level ever since (this never happens!).
· 1674: Paradise Lost published in final form; Milton dies
John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book I
The poem’s famous opening has Milton stating his purpose, and asking a Muse for help.
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse…. I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
….what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Milton asks the Heavenly Muse “who first seduced” Adam and Eve; the Muse answers:
The infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers….
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal….
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe….
He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side,
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began….
”All is not lost: the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire – that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
And this empyreal substance, cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven."
So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair.
This creature, now called Satan, tells the other Fallen Angels to follow him to a hilltop above the flames, where he plans to build a meeting hall to be called Pandaemonium. Satan gets up:
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air.
Satan lands on the hilltop and gives his most famous speech.
"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"
Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat
That we must change for Heaven?--this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so…. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor, one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Reading Guide: John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book I
1.. Milton says that his subject is “Man’s ______, and the ______
of that ______.” What Biblical story is he talking about?
2. For help in this he asks, “Sing, ______.” Who would this be?
3. Milton “invokes” this “aid” to help his “______song,” while it “______things ______yet in ______or ______.”
4. “What is in me ______, ______,” he prays. What does this mean?
5. He says that his mission is to “justify the ______of ______to ______.”
6. After God tossed Satan out of Heaven, he “Lay vanquished” without moving for how long?
7. Satan sees that Hell’s fire gives “No light, but rather ______.”
8. These flames “Served only to discover ______of ______.”
9. The creature “soon discerns …/ One next himself in power,” who is “named” ______.
10. Satan vows to continue war because “All is not ______; the unconquerable ______/ and study of ______, immortal ______,/ and ______never to ______or ______.” He claims that God felt “the terror of this ______” and “Doubted his ______.” Is this likely?
11. After all this “Vaunting aloud,” Satan actually is “racked with deep ______.” What does that tell us about his bragging in question #10?
12. Satan builds a meetings hall called ______. What does word usually mean?
· That word, by etymology, would literally mean ______
13. Read the description of how Satan flies. What does it sound like? (hint: not bat, dragon)
14. As he surveys Hell, Satan says, “The ______is its own ______, and in itself can make / A ______of ______, a ______of ______.”
15. “Here at least,” says Satan, “we shall be ______.” Paradox, much?
16. Satan famously concludes that it is “Better to ______in ______than ______in ______.” Is it?
Turn In Today:
· Opening Freewrite: Bad Guy, Bad Place
· CLOZE: The Lady of Cambridge (completed!)
· Reading Guide
o Paradise Lost, Book I completed
o Paradise Lost, Books II-XII as far as you got
Keep:
· Text/excerpts: Paradise Lost – will do rest tomorrow!
The Mind In Hell: Excerpts from Paradise Lost II - XII
Book II: Moloch, “the strongest and fiercest Spirit/That fought Heaven,” addresses Pandaemonium.
My sentence is for open war. Of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need; not now.
…. let us rather choose,
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once
O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the Torturer; … What can be worse
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned
In this abhorred deep to utter woe!
… More destroyed than thus,
We should be quite abolished, and expire.
What fear we then? …—happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being!....
He ended frowning.
After debate, the demons vote to have Satan leave Hell to get revenge by destroying Mankind in Eden.
Book III: Satan escapes Hell; God in Heaven watches him, and speaks to His Son about it.
….Man will hearken to his glozing lies,
And easily transgress the sole command,
Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall
He and his faithless progeny: Whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal Powers
And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail'd;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,
Where only what they needs must do appear'd,
Not what they would? what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid?
….they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I; if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault….
They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge, and what they choose; for so
I form'd them free: and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves; … they themselves ordain'd their fall…..
But Mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine.
Book IV: Satan lands in Eden, looks its beauty, and with nobody around, he considers his situation.
…. horrour and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place….
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven, and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began.